The monkeys know all.

Tag Archives: clothing

Dutch designer and V2_ collaborator, Anouk Wipprecht and Austrian hacker Daniel Schatzmayr (thingiversetwitter) dress features a hexpod perched around the shoulders of wearer, or perhaps it’s a dress with tripod epaulets. Normally the legs simply slowly wave, but when something triggers the proximity (sonar?) sensors, the legs suddenly pull in tight, as if the dress has become scared.

The “Intimacy” clothing line is an on going project about how people reveal themselves to others. The clothes feature panels that can fade from opaque to transparent by applying an electrical current. As Daan Rosengaarde put it in a recent interview, “With some people you want to show more and some people you want to show less. We thought it would make complete sense that the dress would be proactive in that: either you have control or you lose control.” To this end, sensors in the clothing monitor the wearer’s heart rate and turn the dress transparent as the rate increases.

The first version of this dress was designed back in 2009 by Maartje Dijkstra along with V2_Lab. Building on this work, Intimacy 2.0 was designed by Anouk Wipprecht in 2011. Studio Rosengaarde is currently accepting proposals for version 3.0, which will feature men’s suits that turn transparent when the wearer lies.

As it concerns identity design we all recognize Helvetica as a bastion of the rise of the practice of corporate identity in the 1960s, deployed with unrelenting passion by the likes of Massimo Vignelli and Unimark in the U.S. and Total Design in Europe. It helped shed decorative logos and present a unified front for corporations of all sizes in the most serious of manners. It was, in a way, a unifying technology of the era, establishing a specific standard for how logos should look. And that’s my biggest issue with Helvetica: It’s 1960s technology, 1960s aesthetics, 1960s principles. You know what else is technology from the 1960s? Rotary-dial telephones. The BASIC computer language. Things we’ve built on for the past 50 years and stopped using as the new, more functional, more era-appropriate products took hold. Today there are dozens of contemporary sans serif typefaces that improve the performance and aesthetics of Helvetica but yet some designers still hold on to it as if it were the ultimate typeface. It’s not. Just because it’s been glorified in a similar way as the suits and clothing in Mad Men doesn’t mean it’s still the right choice. You don’t see people today dressed like Don Draper or Lane Pryce — the business-person equivalents of a business typeface — because fashion has changed, attitudes have changed, the world has changed. But, like cockroaches, Helvetica seems to be poised to survive time and space, no matter what. When you see someone walking down the street, today, dressed like a 1960s business person, you (or at least I) think “what a douche.” That’s the same thought I have when I see something/someone using Helvetica.

The main argument of using Helvetica is that it’s “neutral.” That is absolute bullshit. There is nothing neutral about Helvetica. Choosing Helvetica has as much meaning and carries as many connotations as choosing any other typeface. It has as many visual quirks as any other typeface it was meant to shun for needless decoration. Helvetica is the fixed-gear bike of typefaces: it’s as basic as it gets, but the statement it makes is as complex as anything else. Standing for independence and going against the grain, supposedly not caring about what others think or of being duped for the upgrades and improvements that “the man” forces upon us. Helvetica is old. Helvetica is clunky. No business, service, or product deserves Helvetica in the twenty-first century more than anyone deserves to sit in a dentist chair in the 1960s.

I agree that it’s absurd to say that Helvetica is “neutral” since nothing is truly neutral, especially given its history as essentially the stylish least-common denominator. The politically correct font if you will. I also agree that fetishizing the past is lazy. Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann aren’t some sort of demigods. However, there’s something ironic and a bit pathetic about wanting modernity and advancement in typography of all things. It’s a field that’s based on copying or slightly tweaking existing work. Helvetica? 1896’s Akazidenz Grotesk. Garamond is from the mid 16th century. Some serif fonts can trace their lineage back to illuminated manuscripts, so claiming that designers shouldn’t use a 50 year old font because it’s dated falls flat.

I have recently discovered clothing designer Carol Christian Poell. His coats are some of most unique and stylish things I’ve seen. They look like they’re peacoats from some sort of future Christian Bale dystopia. Although his “high collar jackets” are a bit comical, and make the wearer look like Darth Malak. Curious, I looked around online to find some place that sold his clothes. I found two. Darklands in Berlin, and Atelier New York. The prices are insane. €2853 for the “Meltlock one piece dead end coat”, and it’s not even in my size.

Fashion designer Alexander McQueen is dead. I was never someone who followed fashion, in fact for years I found haute couture baffling until I stopped seeing them as ostensibly clothes, but rather simply as art.

The reason I bring this up is not only because the guy apparently committed suicide, or that the man knew how to put on a show, but because I’ve been sitting on that picture of the Milan Fall 09 “The McQueensberry Rules” show for a year in my drafts folder, and I’ll never get it out if I don’t use it now.

Any of these would have been perfect for someone attending the Edwardian Ball.

I needed a new laptop back since my old one developed some tears. (I think it was caused by the D-clip I hooked on to it.) After seeing that Timbuk2 was allowing people to custom order bags, I drove up to the retail store in SF, and made one just for me. A week later, it was ready. It cost $140, just $10 over the normal price.